Stamford schools custodian charged with stealing time

Updated 10:01 pm, Thursday, August 1, 2013

STAMFORD -- Police arrested a long-time schools custodian for leaving his post while he was clocked in at work earlier this year.

Andrew Shavers, 65, of 1 Southfield Ave., was charged with second-degree larceny by defrauding a public entity, and was released after posting $15,000 bond. He is scheduled to be arraigned at state Superiour Court in Stamford on Aug. 15.

Police declined to comment on the case, saying that the city's Law Department put a "gag order" on releasing any particulars.

The mayor's office had scheduled a news conference for Thursday afternoon "to discuss two independent, serious personnel issues," but later postponed the meeting indefinitely. Details of the second personnel issue have not yet been released.

Shavers is a 42-year city employee at the top of his pay scale and has an annual base salary of $65,000. He took in $91,000 with overtime and other benefits last year.

Shavers vehemently denied the charge, saying that someone is trying to get rid of him.

He said police explained after picking him up at work at Rippowam Middle School on Thursday morning that someone at city hall requested that police follow him in an unmarked car.

He was told that one day in May police followed him to a podiatrist's appointment, another appointment and a liquor store while he was supposed to be working.

"They are trying to get rid of me, make me retire and get rid me and get some other supervisor in my place," Shaver said after he was booked and released. "I am the first and only black Head Custodian 2 the city of Stamford ever had. I am at the top of the pay scale."

Shavers said he began hearing through the grapevine earlier this week that he was going to be arrested for something.

He said his boss, Al Barbarotta, president of AFB Management, which provides facilities management services to the school system, stopped by and saw him on Tuesday and did not say anything about a police investigation, but just kept asking him when he was going to retire.

"They did not give me the chance to turn myself in," Shavers said. "I did not like that at all. If my boss had something to say to me, he should have said something."

Shavers said he was going to call an attorney and threatened to file a civil rights suit.

"I have been treated entirely different than the white people have been treated," he said.